


The Lay of Thrym (Director's Cut)

by rayemars



Category: Norse Religion & Lore
Genre: Breathplay, Forced Feminization, M/M, Misogyny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-21
Updated: 2014-12-21
Packaged: 2018-03-02 17:15:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2819981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rayemars/pseuds/rayemars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story is a popular one--but a few details were left out between what really happened and what was later told.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lay of Thrym (Director's Cut)

The queen's rooms have been turned into an impromptu staging area for Thor's shame as the gods continue to drop off baubles and trinkets and other womanly items for him to wear on his journey into Jotunheim. At this point, were he to adorn himself in everything that's been supplied for him, he'd not only sink to the floor under the weight, he'd most likely plummet through the earth as well.

Loki has pointed out that doing so could make it easier to find where Thrym has hid Mjölnir--so long as they pile on enough trifles that he sinks eight fathoms deep.

Thor did not appreciate the suggestion. It's contemptible enough that he must dress as a bride and go weaponless into Jotunheim; Loki's endless little jokes and bellicose amusement only worsen the situation.

Knowing that Loki will be sharing his shame does not alleviate it. The jotun seems to care nothing that he too will be stuffed into a servant's dress, and he treats the whole matter as one of amusement, nothing worse than the source of a good tale. His inappropriate attitude toward the situation only sharpens Thor's humiliation from it.

Such are the thoughts in his head as Loki attempts to fit him into the feminine garments draped over Frigga's sofa. She and her servants have left the room while they don the clothing, but Loki's dress lies forgotten across the bed as he struggles to tie Thor into the belt meant to increase not his strength but rather his womanly appearance.

He grunts as Loki tries to tighten the high, wide girdle further around his waist. "That's enough. This is unnecessary."

"I disagree," Loki replies calmly, since it's not _his_ guts being squeezed up his chest. "As does Freyja, as does Frigga, as do others. It is absolutely necessary."

"It needn't to be so **tight** ," Thor growls.

Loki only laughs behind him.

A few breaths later, he urges Thor closer to the reflective glass that Odin brought back for Frigga after one of his travels in Midgard. "Thor," he says dryly. "Can you truly tell me you look like one of the fairest goddesses in shining Asgard? Or do you look like a large and strapping _god_ who's been squeezed into a rather hastily-made dress?"

Thor scowls at his appearance.

He looks a fool. The dress he's meant to wear had to be cut in half and remade with more fabric to even begin to fit him, and the skirt hangs absurdly over his legs: too tight around his thighs, loose at his waist and hips. Thor has made it clear what he will do to these thieving giants as soon as he has Mjölnir in his grasp again, and Frigga was the only goddess willing to sacrifice any dresses to meet such a bloody end. The shirt lays on the nearby sofa, waiting for him to be squeezed into this nonsensical contraption before the queen returns to attempt sewing it around him.

"You refuse to shave your beard," Loki adds, because Thor not only vehemently rejected the idea, he also punched the blade from Loki's hand when he suggested it. "There's nothing to be done about your arms or size. You must at least have the _appearance_ of full hips. They're hardly going to believe you're the real Freyja if you don't look fertile."

Thor makes another deeply frustrated noise in the back of his throat. But there is no immediate flaw in Loki's logic he can find to latch onto. He's already tried, with Freyja and Frigga, with Heimdall and Odin; even Sif only expressed sympathy for the humiliation while still saying it was necessary. If he went to Jotunheim wearing a glamour to appear more like Freyja, the giants would immediately suspect a substitute. So he must be physically contorted in appearance instead.

"Come, come," Loki says cheerily, increasing Thor's ill-temper. He pats one of the wooden ribs of the girdle. "She was generous enough to loan you this, even though it will undoubtedly be broken in pieces by the feast's end."

"Enough," Thor mutters. "Get on with it."

"What do you think I've been trying to do?" he replies. "It's difficult enough without you constantly fighting me. Stop fidgeting."

Thor lets out a long breath through his teeth, and tries to remain still.

"Hm," Loki says, pulling experimentally on the cords.

Thor frowns as he feels Loki begin undoing the few that were already tightened. Before he can demand an explanation, Loki adds, "Breathe out like that again."

He makes a face but does so, and then jerks when the jotun wrenches the cords harshly. " _ **Loki**!_ "

"Ah," Loki says, sounding pleased, completely ignoring the threat in his tone. He begins to thread the cords through the next loops of the girdle. "That works. We may fool Thrym yet, Thor. Breathe out again."

Thor curses him several times over, but Loki only laughs it off and repeats himself. When Thor finally exhales, he wrenches the cords tight once more.

"Hm," Loki ponders, as Thor regains his footing. "If only...."

He soon pushes at Thor's waist a second time, urging him toward the wall. "Go to that beam."

Thor grumbles but goes, hating the way the skirt hampers his legs so he's forced to take short, mincing steps rather than proper strides. Loki keeps the cords wrapped close around his fist as he follows, preventing the girdle from expanding again.

"Grip it tight," Loki orders, starting to thread the cords through the next loop. "Stay as still as possible. Also, try not to break the post," he adds with another sliver of a smile. "I can't imagine her highness would appreciate that."

Thor places his hands on the beam as a strange, unsettled feeling begins to twist through him. "Is this necessary?" he demands.

"I hope it will make this go easier, and therefore quicker," Loki replies. He tugs loosely on the cords. "Let me try it and see. Exhale, Thor."

Thor scowls once more, the peculiar feeling still drifting in his gut. But he tightens his grasp and huffs out a breath.

"More," Loki chides. "It won't work unless you breathe out completely."

Thor attempts to shake off his discomfort and exhales fully. Loki wrenches the cords more viciously than before.

It jerks him violently on his feet--but between the grip on the beam and his deliberate effort to remain still, it doesn't move him as much as before. " _ **Damn**_ you!"

"Excellent," Loki says with satisfaction. "Much better. It shouldn't take long at all like this."

Thor spits out curses and flexes his palms against the wood. "Stop sounding so pleased."

"I enjoy solving problems," he replies.

Thor snorts. Loki begins to thread the cords through the next loop and says, "When you're ready, exhale."

Thor reminds himself that it will be finished quicker this way, and forces down once more the niggling feeling that something is ill here. He breathes out.

"Too soon," Loki remarks. He tugs lightly on the cords. "I just finished. Here, I'll tell you when."

He wraps the cords tight around his fists. "Now, Thor."

Thor exhales until it feels as if he's spent all the air within him, and Loki yanks the girdle close once more.  
  
  
It goes on that way for what feels like a long time, though Loki continues to insist it's quicker than any other method would be. Thor breathes out when told, struggles to remain steady on his feet as Loki wrests the girdle tighter, and pants for air as Loki feeds the cord through the next loops. Then he repeats the process, over and over and over and over again.

When the girdle's fastened high enough that the wooden slats are digging into his ribs, Thor realizes he can no longer breathe right.

The thought sends a sharp, brutal lance of horror through him. He is the god of storms and lightning and wind: to lack air is to lack his very **power**.

To lack the control of air when he has already lost Mjölnir is to be nearly helpless.

"Loki!" he gasps--and then he manages to halt his tongue before he shames himself in front of the most shameless resident of Asgard.

"Yes?" Loki prompts after a few heartbeats of silence. His voice, too, sounds rougher, as if he were also burdened by the damned belt he's forcing Thor into.

Thor reminds himself harshly that the girdle is nothing more than a piece of Vanir frippery, made of bits of wood and scraps of cloth. He can rip loose of it easily. He **will** rip loose of it, and this wretched skirt, and all the other trinkets the Aesir are taking far too much delight in dangling on him, once he has Mjölnir back in hand and has set to the task of slaughtering Thrym and his kin for their thievery and arrogance.

"How much longer?" he demands hoarsely. Even those few words come out pinched, revealing his weakness against his wishes. Thor clenches his jaw.

He jolts sharply when Loki touches a finger to his back.

"It's more than halfway finished," he answers, and still his voice sounds strained. Thor tenses as Loki trails the finger up his spine, tracing each exposed ridge in a way that feels perversely intimate.

It makes him think unwillingly of one particular reason why he's ceased traveling with Loki of late. The unsettled feeling curls more thickly within him.

Loki taps his back below his shoulder blades. "Here's where you'll be finished. With enough effort, you might even appear to have a bosom."

Thor grunts at the inappropriate mirth in his voice. Loki chuckles in response, but he doesn't immediately pull his hand away; and Thor thinks again of the edge in his voice.

He twists around to glare over his shoulder and finds Loki staring at him with dark eyes and a darker smile, his throat and face flushed and his look of--perverted, obscene, **shameless** \--lust clear.

"You--" Thor says gutturally, shoving away from the beam. " _Get out_."

"As you wish," Loki replies, still smiling. "But if I let go, that girdle will spill loose before you take more than a half dozen steps."

He lets his grip on the cords slacken. "You'll need to have it tightened all over again. Who else do you wish to see you panting and enfeebled like this, Thor? I could fetch them once I depart."

Thor clenches his fists until he begins to draw blood. "You will pay for this."

"That hardly seems fair. It was Heimdall who suggested you play Freyja's role as bride, not me," Loki responds, still wearing that close-lipped smile. "Why am I to bear the brunt of your humiliation? _I'm_ the one who found where the hammer was taken in the first place."

"You are the one who's--who's **enjoying** this!"

"How absolutely unlike my nature to do so," Loki drawls, dry as a drought wind, and were Thor not so infuriated he might have laughed.

He glares instead, acutely aware of how his chest is heaving in the girdle's confines and how little air he's breathing in despite it. He can feel the fabric peeling open around him, unraveling all he's had to bear already, soon to leave him forced to endure it again.

And to have it observed by yet another.

Thor clenches his fists tighter. Then he makes them to go slack once more, before hissing out a slow breath.

"Just finish," he grits. "And keep your perversity to yourself."

Loki lifts the corner of his mouth. 

He winds the cords tauter around his fist and tilts his head faintly. "You'll have to turn back around."

Thor curses him lowly and eventually does so. Loki doesn't laugh off the words this time.

When he smiles the way he does now, it makes the scars around his mouth clearer.

It reminds Thor that Loki's pranks lately have become less often jokes and more frequently cruelties. Even when his mood is good, he never fails to take an opportunity to embarrass Thor if he spies the chance, as though punishing him for the fact that Mjölnir was rightly chosen as the best of the dwarves' six gifts. He _still_ delights in spreading the tale of their trip to Utgard, uncaring of the fact that he must relate his own lost contest first as long as he can tell of Thor's failures afterward.

When they were traveling toward the stronghold--too slowly, now that Thor had left his goats and chariot with the farmer's family who'd desecrated them--the bondservants Thor had claimed in repayment for the loss were still terrified of his temper. They walked closer to Loki whenever allowed, preferring the warming flame of his bright wit to Thor's stony frustration. The very first night, the girl had sat huddled next to Loki by the fire while the jotun chuckled and draped the edge of his cloak over her shoulder and told her in a loud whisper that Mjölnir's handle was short for a reason, until Thor threatened to hit him for the vague and insulting verse.

"Exhale," Loki says.

Thor takes as deep a breath as he can manage and does so. He grunts when Loki wrenches the girdle back into place.  
  
  
By the time the girdle is cinched closed at last, Thor can no longer breathe except in shallow sips of air. His head is dizzy and his sight blurs at the edges; Freyja's necklace feels heavier on his chest. He would have cast it off already if he hadn't given her his word to always keep it within reach. He startles fiercely when Loki rests heavy hands on his waist.

"Excellent work, if I must compliment myself," Loki murmurs, humor in his voice once more. "Once we cover those arms and that face, you might very well be taken for a goddess--at least by a giant who knows no better."

"Enough," Thor pants. "Call Frigga."

"Wouldn't you rather catch your breath first?" Loki smiles; and Thor snarls at him and then closes his eyes. He's chagrined by how much effort it's becoming to keep them open.

"There, there," Loki murmurs, patting his side. "I'm sure we can find a way to salvage that fragile pride of yours."

"Do not insult my pride because you have none," Thor manages.

"I once preserved Asgard by having a goat wrench my balls about before the entire court," Loki comments, moving away. "I fail to see how wearing a dress for a day is so much greater an embarrassment for you to do the same."

Thor grumbles to himself but, again, cannot find where to grasp at the statement to reveal Loki's twisting logic, though he knows it must be possible. Odin would be able to do it.

"If you hate this so, you shouldn't have lost the hammer in the first place," Loki says. The humor is gone from his voice once more.

Thor blinks his eyes open and tries to focus his gaze, but then a thick mist falls over his sight. Loki adjusts the veil on his head.

"Enough," Thor says, pushing away from the wall and struggling to remain steady on his feat, striving to retain his demeanor of command and threat despite the unnatural clothes and his breathlessness and the absence of Mjölnir. "You have humiliated me enough for losing it, Loki. Cease this."

"Have I?" Loki asks, and his tone snaps tension into Thor's frame.

He fumbles at the veil until he's shoved it away from his face. Loki is staring at him again, wearing another close-lipped smile.

"I nearly lost my head to provide Asgard with her greatest defense," the jotun says. "You chased me down and dragged me back to fulfill that bet. And now you've carelessly lost the very same weapon I paid so much to acquire. Is seeing you in a few bits of women's dress _really_ sufficient recompense?"

It is not Thor's fault that Loki made an unwise bet because he was greedy for more treasures. It's Loki's own fault he was in the dwarves' realm in the first place: he wouldn't have needed to be there if he hadn't promised to replace Sif's shorn hair, which was also his own fault. But to throw these words back at Loki will only leave the jotun an opening to comment on _why_ Sif's hair was shorn in the first place, and Loki has seized enough of those since Ull was born.

"Cease this," Thor says instead, as steadily as he can. "I did not choose to lose the hammer."

"Of course not," Loki smiles. "What is Thor without Mjölnir? But lose it you did, and now Asgard stands once more in threat of being forced to give Freyja to Jotunheim."

Thor makes a guttural noise in his throat--but yet again, knowing that Loki's words are a twisted truth is not the same as knowing where to being beating them back into sincerity.

Loki reaches out and brushes the veil over his face. "Breathe, Thor," he says softly. "I will call Frigga soon enough."

The veil is thick and opaque, meant to conceal his face and beard and identity until Mjölnir is in his hand once more. Thor can only see vaguely through it, able to determine outlines and dark shapes. He knows the queen's room reasonably well, but the further blurring of his vision underscores how little air he can bring into his chest with the girdle compressed sharply around it, how little of his power he's left access to.

Loki lays a palm on his waist, and Thor tenses.

"You do look startlingly like a maiden," Loki murmurs, cupping both hands around the sides of the girdle and pressing his fingers against Thor's stomach. Thor inhales as the gesture further constricts him. "The rest of the dress, a proper cloak, some keys and other baubles, and you might even look like a true bride come to her new husband's hall...and bed."

" _Loki_ ," he warns harshly; but such threats have never stopped Loki before, and now is no exception.

"But like this?" Loki continues, his voice still too low, too soft, too obscenely intimate in the bedroom empty of all but the two of them. "Now you look like a bride midway stripped and nearly ready for bedsport."

Thor curses him angrily and then gasps when Loki slides his hands up to his chest. The wooden slats of the girdle creak as they dig bruisingly hard into his ribs, and Thor struggles to steady his breathing, to gain enough air to turn and beat Loki to the ground for this debasing vulgarity.

Loki tugs his flesh loose of the girdle's confines until his upper chest rests above it, plumped slightly by the tight compression of the fabric, before cupping Thor there as if it truly were a bosom. Thor glances down despite himself, staring at Loki's fingers splayed lewdly across his chest, feeling fury and the strange, unpleasant sensation of before heating his skin. He jolts when Loki rubs his thumbs along his nipples.

"Lovely Freyja," Loki hums. "Jotunheim has waited so long for you. Though we expected you to be a bit more voluptuous."

" ** _Enough_** ," he snarls. "You filthy, wretched--"

"If you grow much louder, Thor, someone will surely come to see what's the trouble," Loki says matter-of-factly. "And _I_ have no reputation left to besmirch."

Thor curses him until he's gasping for breath, unsteady on his feet with the dizziness and rage boiling within him. Loki only chuckles and urges him forward until he's pressed to the beam of the wall. Thor grips it unthinkingly, scrabbling for a bulwark against the lack of air and this slow, quiet manipulation.

"Lovely, lovely Freyja," Loki murmurs, sliding a hand up to tangle it in the chain of Brisingr. "Do not worry. No small flaw of form will lessen what you are." He twists his fingers further into the necklace. "Or what you bring with you."

" _Cease_ this," Thor pants, closing his eyes involuntarily as the links begin to bite into his neck.

"You must stop this fighting, my goddess," Loki smiles, a dark, cool humor in his voice. "I am to be your husband and master soon. This disobedience will not bode well for our friendship."

Thor shudders at the words, gripping the beam tighter and imagining it's Loki's throat in his hands instead.

Then he forces himself to breathe more steadily, and reminds himself that Loki's pranks are little more than blithe cruelties these days. He is only feeding Loki's amusement by cursing him.

"There," Loki says encouragingly, when Thor is still trying to gather enough air to break loose. "You see? I'll not be such a terrible husband to you, my lovely goddess."

Loki presses a kiss to the bare skin of his back where it's exposed between the girdle and the veil. Thor clenches his teeth against another shudder, and against the slight pleasantness of the act that he desperately wishes to ignore.

Loki moves closer, a warm weight against his back that Thor might enjoy if it were caused by his wife or a lover. He brushes the veil over Thor's shoulders before setting his lips to Thor's skin once again.

"I admit, I'm glad to see your size," Loki murmurs, mouth still resting against his back. His breath is warm against the spot, and Thor feels the slight flick of his tongue as he speaks. "I feared you'd be some slip of a Vanir, swallowed up in the bed beneath me. I worried you might be incapable of... _accommodation_." Loki twines the links of Brisingr further around his fingers, chuckling. "There is quite a difference between dwarves and a giant, after all."

"Filth," Thor gasps out. He grits his jaw when Loki pulls Brisingr tighter, cutting the necklace hard into his throat.

"Honest concern for your welfare, my bride-to-be," Loki replies, laughter in his voice. "Here, let me show you the cause of my concern."

Thor jerks as Loki begins gathering up the skirt. "If you **dare** \--"

"You needn't defend your honor, lovely Freyja," Loki smirks, pulling the fabric higher up Thor's legs. "We've all heard the tales."

"I will kill you for this, Loki," Thor promises, as low and steady as he can manage.

"No you won't," he replies, finally ending his twisted game. "Unless you intend to wage war against the All-father himself as well."

Thor grinds his teeth. "Then I will stop short of the death you deserve."

"And while I recover from your brutal beating, Freyja will be dragged to Jotunheim," Loki says calmly. "Unless you imagine you can deceive Thrym and his kind without the aid of a steadier head."

"Do not **dare** ," Thor growls, clenching the beam tighter. His head is dizzy and fogged and he cannot come up with any further argument that Loki won't be able to shred in a breath. "Do not dare."

"Rest easy, my lovely bride," Loki smiles; and Thor closes his eyes as he realizes it wasn't a cessation of the game but only a respite. "No matter where else in the nine realms you've opened your legs, this is a wedding. Rituals must be observed." Loki drops another kiss to his shoulder. "Our first proper joining will occur in the marriage bed, as is seemly. But surely it's better for a wife to understand what she'll be accepting at eventide before she arrives at the marriage feast? I would not want to ruin your appetite with distracted frets and half-formed fears."

Thor shifts his head, trying to find a position where Brisingr does not bite his throat so badly. "I will make you pay for this."

"So ungrateful," Loki says ruefully; and then he leans in close and presses his mouth to Thor's ear through the veil, and whispers, "Really, Thor, has that ever stopped me before?"

He keeps Brisingr taut against Thor's neck as he drags the skirt up his thighs and over his hips. Thor pants for what air he can get, desperately trying to summon more to himself. But there is only so much space inside him with the brutal confines of the girdle squeezing him inward.

When Loki's bunched the skirt around his waist, he pulls his hand away. Thor feels the back of it brush his buttocks occasionally as he undoes the laces of his pants, while his other hand keeps the necklace pulled tight into his throat. Soon Loki makes a soft, relieved noise behind him.

When he feels Loki's cock nudge against his legs, Thor draws as deep a breath as he can force and prepares himself to attack. If he collapses from a lack of air after the first strike, at least he will have **tried** to defend himself. Even failure will be more tolerable than acceptance.

But then Loki pushes forward hard, sliding his cock between Thor's thighs. Thor jerks in surprise.

"Ah, so you feel it then?" Loki asks. His voice has grown rougher again, less steady. "You understand now, lovely goddess, why I feared the marriage bed might break you?"

Thor exhales harshly as he realizes this filthy parody of a sexual act is what Loki intends.

He has some knowledge of the girth of Loki's cock, from what he's seen on their journeys as the jotun bathed or pissed in his presence. But those times, Loki's cock was soft. The thickness sliding between his thighs now is more than Thor expected.

"You needn't shiver," Loki croons, and Thor realizes with a jolt of shamed horror that he is doing exactly that. It worsens as the instinct to breathe harder is stymied by the girdle, until soon he's shaking as if he truly were a bride facing the shock of her new husband's endowment.

Loki releases the necklace and pets his sides, making soft soothing noises. "I'll not be a terrible husband to you, my lovely goddess. I'll be gentle until you've learned how to accept me." The undercurrent of mockery returns to his voice as he adds: "I have it on good authority that some Aesir you know have even found taking a giant's prick highly enjoyable."

Thor growls thickly as he pants for air now that the constriction on his throat has ended. "Enough."

"Not at all," Loki smirks. "Let me show you."

Thor grunts as Loki curls his hands around his waist, pressing his fingers into the girdle as he sets a slow but relentless pace. His legs box in Thor's own, forcing him to keep his thighs pressed together tight against the cock between them.

Thor clenches his jaw and flexes his hands around the beam again, struggling to gain enough air and to convince himself it's better to wait out this nasty prank. He's survived others Loki has laid out for him before; this is ultimately no different. When everything is over he will make Loki pay thoroughly for it.

The strange, chafing friction against his legs and taint slowly lessens as Loki's cock slickens with pre-spend. Soon, Loki is no longer hissing out every other breath as he drives forward but instead making pleased murmurs in the back of his throat.

They're soft, content noises that Thor would enjoy coaxing from a wife or lover; and they sound very little like the harsh, sharp creature Loki has been reshaping himself into of late. Loki's weight is still a warming presence against his back, and the heat and friction and pressure against Thor's taint and balls is becoming harder to ignore.

Thor grinds his teeth as he feels his cock begin to stir despite himself. He grips the post tighter.

He will not invite more humiliation by drawing attention to this, or by attacking Loki now and creating such a ruckus that others come and observe his shaming. Later, soon, Loki will pay. Thor clings to the thought as he does to the beam: an anchor, a lifeline. This will end soon, and then Loki will pay for doing it to him.

But it does not end soon enough, because 'unobservant' is one insult which can never hold to Loki. Thor eventually hears the jotun make a quiet chuckle; and then Loki drops a hand from his waist and tugs at the skirt until he cups a hand around Thor's cock.

"No," Thor gasps, pushing away from the beam. Loki leans his weight heavier on him, leaving Thor to hiss and pant as the pressure further burdens his lungs.

"How awkward it must be to be a fertility god," Loki smiles, tightening his grip and beginning to stroke him. The next thrust of his hips is harder, forcing Thor to brace against the post once more. "To be driven to respond, even when you do not wish to enjoy."

Thor wastes air he cannot afford to lose snarling at him. His vision is beginning to spark at the edges, as if stars have become trapped inside his veil.

Loki wraps an arm around him until his palm is pressed to Thor's exposed chest. "Breathe, my lovely goddess," he murmurs against Thor's ear, his breath ruffling the veil. "You mustn't forget you still have duties to attend to after this. You'll have time enough to loll breathless in our bed later."

"You will pay for this," Thor manages, because he cannot allow Loki's depraved words to go unanswered no matter what it costs him.

"Undoubtedly," Loki replies, his grin clear in his voice: a sound Thor misses sometimes, when Loki's mood is good long enough that the pleasure of his company erodes the steady buildup of insults and slights. "Later. But for now, I will enjoy myself. Breathe, Thor. If you pass out I'll have to bring in a servant to fetch water."

Thor snarls again and then clenches the beam as a wave of heated dizziness washes over him. Loki tightens the arm around his chest, pushing him forward until he's leaning heavily against the wall, pinned between the post and Loki's solid frame. Thor closes his eyes and slumps into it, overheated, airless, at the mercy once more of the one jotun in all the realms whom he cannot destroy for his actions because the All-father's blood runs mixed in his veins.

Loki makes him take his pleasure in the obscenity. His hand is a steady and warm pressure on Thor's cock, working it as Thor shakes and gasps and struggles to curse until finally the fight is lost and he spends into Loki's grip. Loki breathes out a groan when he does.

He releases Thor's cock while it's still dribbling the few last drops of seed, letting it slap against his thighs. Thor grunts, and then clenches his jaw shut as Loki grabs his waist once more.

Loki ruts against him roughly now that he's gotten what he wished from Thor. No longer tense and trembling with restraint, he drives forward in short, harsh jerks that press Thor against the wall, leaving him scrabbling to brace himself and keep from cracking his face against the beam. The veil spills from his head. Were this a bed, it would creak from the force.

It doesn't take Loki long to chase down his desire; and when he reaches it, he braces heavily against Thor's back, nearly buckling Thor's knees. Thor forces himself to remain standing more in desperation to preserve what dignity he has left rather than from any real residual strength.

Loki remains draped over him for a long time, staying there even after his cock has finished spending and begun to go soft. He chuckles quietly to himself, the sound almost inaudible under Thor's rasping breaths.

Thor staggers when Loki draws away abruptly, stumbling as the jotun pulls him backward. He trips into the stool Loki tugs him toward and then drops heavily onto it, bracing his hands against his thighs as he futilely tries to catch his breath.

He jerks in shock when Loki soon crouches before him and begins to wipe off his thighs with a scrap of cloth. Thor grabs him by the throat.

Loki hacks before catching his wrist and twisting free. Thor watches him shift away, thinking of his own belt in the chest in his hall; if he could double the miserable strength he has now, it would at least be closer to his usual.

"You cannot ruin Frigga's dress," Loki smirks, rubbing his throat. "She's worked so hard on it for this." His smirk widens. "Unless you _wish_ to leave evidence."

Thor clenches his hands into fists. "If you dare speak of this--"

"Why would I?" Loki replies, rising to his feet. He folds the scrap of cloth in his hands, and his smile as he watches Thor's face doesn't match the look in his eyes.

It's the same expression that sends Thor's palm to Mjölnir's handle each time he sees it these days, in an instinctive response to the danger he senses there.

"I _could_ tell," Loki shrugs. "And so earn yet another beating from you, and have it be a brief joke within Asgard that Thor was so intent on convincing the giants he was Freyja he even emulated her wantonness."

The smile slips from his mouth, leaving him staring at Thor with that dark, pleased look of hatred and hunger. "Or I could keep it to myself, so only you and I ever know how you leaned into my touch after being brought so low and feeble and humiliated."

Loki tilts his head, and adds, "I do keep secrets sometimes, Thor."

All the words and insults and threats Thor wants to respond with are tangled in his thoughts, and even if he could string them together properly he isn't sure he has the air for it. He glares instead.

Loki stares back, holding Thor's eyes as he wipes off his own cock and refastens his leggings. Finally, he steps forward and crouches to finish cleaning Thor's thighs. Thor clenches his fists tighter, but keeps them to himself.  
  
  
By the time Loki goes to summon Frigga, the skirt has been smoothed back over Thor's legs and the scrap of cloth has burnt away in the fire. Thor finds he cannot quite meet her gaze as she enters.

She takes a long look at him, and then purses her lips and comes over and begins to undo the girdle.

She chides Loki as she refastens it far looser than before, telling him he should have known better: it was much too tight. Any god besides Thor would likely have collapsed from a lack of air by now.

Loki merely shrugs a shoulder from his sprawled and improper seat on the bed. He picks idly at the servant's dress, saying that he's unfamiliar with women's clothing; Sigyn does not expect him to fasten her brooches for her.

Thor stares at him silently as Frigga laces the girdle.

Loki catches his heavy gaze once, and flicks the briefest of smirks over his lips before looking back to her.  
  
  
Days later, in Jotunheim, Thor slaughters Thrym and all his kin and then finds where Loki is hiding behind half a shattered table and drags him out and fucks him brutally until the silvertounged liesmith is unable to do more than shudder and pant raggedly for breath.

By the time Thor regains a modicum of self-control, Loki lies boneless beneath him on the rushes of the hall, smeared in blood and gore from the corpses around them and covered in bruises from Thor's gauntlets, a hand cupped protectively over his spent-dry cock. Mjölnir lays next to him, pinning his hair to the floor.

Thor braces himself on his forearms, struggling to breathe through the heart-pounding pulse of another orgasm. Loki manages to laugh shakily despite Brisingr pulled taut around his throat, the sound rasping with how torn his throat is by now, from hours of cackling and insults and screaming Thor's name.

Finally Thor lets himself collapse, becoming a heavy weight atop Loki's quaking frame. But even that doesn't still the jotun for long. Instead, Loki draws shallow breaths until he can manage to speak once more: "Is your manhood restored then? Proven at last?"

Thor twists the necklace tighter between his fingers until Loki chokes.

"How fragile it must be," Loki gasps. "If you had to exert so much effort to regain it."

If he pulls any harder on Brisingr, he will either break it or kill Loki; and a promise halts him from doing the former, and Odin's blood binds him against the latter. Thor lets go and shoves away instead, grabbing Mjölnir reflexively. "Be _**silent**!_ "

"Never," Loki replies with a wide smile, scarred lips stretched over teeth. "Not for long."

The jotun staggers to his feet, bracing his palms heavily on his shaking legs. After a few moments, he begins to move unsteadily through the remains of the hall, examining the corpses.

Thor turns his gaze away from the bob of his softened cock and the lean muscles of his bruised thighs, frustration rising once more in his chest at the proof that even in _this_ , Loki has twisted his purpose. Loki has turned the situation yet again to his own desired outcome, assigning Thor to a role he did not intend to play. After all their travels and conversations where Thor first railed against and finally aggressively ignored the jotun's improper, suggestive behavior, once again Loki has gotten what he wanted from him. He twists Mjölnir's handle in his grip with a growl.

"Even the most fragile of masculinities would be restored by _now_ ," Loki drawls, the tone undermined by the way his throat cracks. "Any further, and people will begin to question why you're so desperate to prove its presence."

Thor curses lowly. "You will never speak of this, or you will regret it."

Loki throws his head back with a hoarse laugh before looking over his shoulder, his smile all the more brilliant against the tacky blood smeared along his face. "Thor. Such an important journey as this, and I return home with no tale to tell? Now **that** would be suspicious."

He's still too restless with unsated desire to string together the words to argue: his blood thrums through him, his hands still eager to strike, his cock still willing to rise. Even the pounding storm outside doesn't abate his ferocity, only provides a counterpoint to it.

Loki smirks again over his shoulder before stepping away. He crouches slowly to tug on a corpse's shod foot. "Return to yourself, Thor," he says patiently. "You know as well as I you'll never outwit me in this state."

Loki wrenches the boot loose, letting the corpse's leg thump back to the floor. "And then look for clothing. We can hardly return to Asgard naked, and you've ruined the queen's dresses."

Thor curses him much more vehemently; but the impotence of it only proves Loki's point.

Finally, he desists and goes to find the larder. The wedding feast is a distant memory to his stomach by now.  
  
  
Loki drags an overflowing water barrel inside, unearths a tub, and creates a sizable enough fire for a warm bath. Thor dumps the tub out and refills it to take his own, even though the fire dies down in the interim and Loki ignores his orders to make it hotter. The jotun instead spends his time picking through the corpses and chests until he's gathered enough tolerably clean clothing to cover them both. He steals the remainder of the cheese and dried fish from the larder in the process, before Thor can eat them.

The inner room is less damaged than the hall, so they move to it when dusk falls and the floor begins to flood excessively. Freyja's cats fled the stable during the carnage and have yet to return, leaving them stranded with a chariot but no steeds.

"Would you cease that already?" Loki finally demands, dumping the mattress he worked out of the wreckage of the bed closet onto the upper bench. He shakes the rain from his hair with his usual distaste for this element of Thor's power.

"It will pass when **I** wish it to," Thor replies, because in _this_ if nothing else, Loki cannot twist his intent. Here, at least, Loki holds no power over him.

Loki snorts and tosses a cloak atop the mattress. "Then **you** should take first watch," he answers, closing the trap. "After all, if it rises until it begins to flood this room too, _I'll_ not be able to stop it."

Thor grunts as he works out the manipulation and sees that either choice will give Loki half of what he desires, in dryness or in sleep. Loki settles upon the mattress on his side and drapes the cloak over himself.

Thor sits down at the doorway with a scowl. He doesn't fully put his back to the jotun.

After a time, under the slowing fall of the rain, Thor hears the faint sound of metal links shifting; and he realizes the necklace is still in Loki's possession.

"Return Brisingr," he orders.

"You promised Freyja you would keep it within reach," Loki yawns, his voice thicker with verging sleep. "I am in arm's reach."

Thor twists around to glower at him, brows drawn, and rests his palm on the butt of Mjölnir's handle. "Return it now."

"Oh, very well," Loki mumbles, in that old, half-forgotten tone of his, the one he uses when he sees no purpose to arguing. He unfastens the chain and holds the necklace out over his shoulder, still lying turned away from Thor. "It looked more fetching on you, anyway."

Thor growls at him as he pulls it from his hand.

Loki cups his fingers so the stones slip through them in one final caress before Thor's stripped it from his grasp. He curls them in when it's gone, before finally sliding his hand beneath the cloak once more.

Thor watches the gesture with a deep frown, and tucks Brisingr safely within his shirt.  
  
  
Freyja's cats return after dawn, once the storm has blown away. Thor and Loki lash them to the chariot and at last bring Mjölnir back to Asgard, to the great rejoicing of the Aesir.

Odin frowns at the sight of the visible bruises from Thor's gauntlets on Loki's wrists and neck and cheek; but Loki only jokes in response to any questions, and the All-father does not call on Thor to answer for it. Perhaps he thinks Thor mistook Loki for one of Thrym's kin in his bloodlust--Munin may not have passed the news to him yet.

At the feast that night, Thor tenses as Loki's cajoled into telling the tale of their journey and Thor's battle with the giants. He tightens his grip on his drinking horn as Loki starts at the beginning, when Mjölnir was discovered to be lost. The ale turns bitter down his throat.

But Loki only glosses over the troubles of dressing him as a bride. Frigga purses her mouth against a half-frown, half-smile as Loki tosses her a grin while he describes the fine quality of the dress and cloak and girdle, all now, alas, too ruined to be worth carrying back from Jotunheim.

The rest of the tale goes similar. Loki elaborates on the ways Thor nearly revealed himself to the giants, but only so he can then describe the clever excuses he used to explain them away to Thrym and thus save them both. Even Thor can't help grinning as Loki describes how Thrym leapt backward at the sight of his eyes: "Nearly the length of the entire hall!" Loki adds, before shaking his head. "Upset two of the tables, even. Fortunately, Thor had already emptied them."

Sif laughs and pours more ale into Thor's horn. "Never fear, husband," she smiles. " **I** like your eyes, whether they're red as burning coals or not."

Thor grins wider and gives her thigh a brief squeeze beneath the table, and tugs over the platter of her favorite fish so she can reach it easier.

But he still does not relax until Loki is finished.

In time Loki recounts how Thrym's sister demanded finger rings of red gold only to get an iron hammer to the head instead, and then finally concludes his tale--going no further than the slaughter of the giants, and a brief mention that they were delayed waiting for the cats to return to the stable. When he takes his seat across from Odin once more, relinquishing his turn as storyteller, only then does Thor loosen his fingers around his drinking horn.

Sif frowns as she notices the gesture. "Is something wrong?"

"No," Thor answers. "Mjölnir is back and the giants have been reminded not to try slighting Asgard." He smiles. "Everything is well again."

She still looks doubtful; and a few breaths later, the expression in her eyes shifts. Sif's mouth tightens as she glances over to where Loki sits, speaking quietly with Odin amid the laughter in the hall and the other Aesir's prodding of Heimdall to add his take to the early part of the tale.

"Another 'prank'?" she asks, reaching for the jar of ale again. "Or...did he say anything unseemly?"

"No," Thor says, because so far Loki has had the self-preservation to keep his veiled comments about Ull's parentage for Thor's ears only, meaning Thor can pretend it's lies rather than slander and that aside from a brief lapse, his wife is faithful.

He looks over at the All-father of the Aesir and his jotun blood-brother as Odin's dry response makes Loki laugh. Loki drifts a hand above the center fire as he replies, shaping it to an illustration only he and Odin can properly see. One of the rare, small, real smiles that have become little more than a memory these days lingers on his mouth as he does.

Thor does not need to see the answering warmth in Odin's expression to know it's there. He knows the All-father treasures the dwindling moments when Loki is once again the friend he used to be--all the more so because he is keenly aware that one day they will cease entirely.

One day, Loki will be nothing to Asgard but an enemy, and then not even the All-father's blood will save him.

But that will not be Thor's fight.

He takes the ale from Sif's tense hand and shakes his head.

"No," he repeats. "It was too minor a prank to be worth adding to the tale." He fills his horn, then passes the jar to her to replenish her own. "Don't encourage him by asking."

Sif nods in agreement, and they both turn their attention to Heimdall as he stands to speak--her in relief returning to amusement, Thor with a scowl as he's reminded that Heimdall took far too much delight in planning the bridal clothes he had to wear.

Loki gives Heimdall a cold, sidelong look as the god corrects the opening part of the tale he himself told; and when he turns back to Odin his smile is gone as if it had never been.  
  
  
The feast concludes deep in the evening, with part of the Aesir returning to their own homes and others sleeping for the night in the many rooms of Thor's hall. Loki is among the latter, though Roskva helps him slip away before dawn when Thor goes to toss him out.

And so the days wind inexorably toward Ragnarök.  
  
  


And thus Thor won his hammer back.


End file.
